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Moche priestess tomb: Canadian part of dig

A Canadian university student was part of a major archaeological find that gives clues to Peru’s past, including human sacrifice and powerful women.

Matthew Go, an archaeology student at Simon Fraser University, helps with a dig being carried out in Peru by the San Jose de Moro Archaeology Program, which discovered a Moche priestess tomb from 1,200 years ago. (Matthew Go)

Simon Fraser archaeology student Matthew Go, on the right, was part of the team that discovered a Moche priestess tomb from 1,200 years ago buried in the San Jose de Moro site in the Jequetepeque Valley in Peru. (Matthew Go)

Archaeologists and students carefully dig away at the 1,200-year-old tomb for a Moche priestess in the Jequetepeque Valley in Peru. (Matthew Go)

“I know that it’s a rare thing for an undergrad to be able to be a part of such a big discovery,” said Go, an archaeology student at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University who grew up in the Philippines and joined the four-week San Jose de Moro archaeological program for the second year in a row.

The Moche civilization thrived in Peru from 100-850, and the latest priestess appears to be from AD 700-800. She was buried with seven other people, ceramic objects and a funerary mask, but it was a copper goblet that tipped them off that she was a priestess.

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Moche iconography on ceramics, metal objects and adobe murals show individuals performing human sacrifices and offering goblets of blood to the gods, but until the 1990s, archaeologists thought they were mythical figures.

The first sign that the figures were real came with the discovery of a priest in 1987, dubbed the Lord of Sipan. He was buried in an elaborate chamber tomb with a funerary headdress and garments associated with sacrifices in iconography.

Human sacrifices started with Moche-on-Moche combat, said Castillo. “The aim was not to kill but actually to capture.” Captured prisoners were bled to death, and blood was collected in goblets to offer to the gods.

In 1991, the archeologists’ focus shifted to women with the first discovery of a priestess with a headdress and ceremonial goblet, which Castillo says they’ve only found buried with women.

As archaeologists began to uncover a series of priestesses, which Castillo says suggest succession from woman to woman, it became clear that late Moche society, from AD 650-850, was female-centric because women held positions of religious power and played a dominant role in human sacrifices.

Go was in Peru for a routine archaeological dig of a 15-by-15 metre plot, but a change in the colour of the soil tipped the team off that they were close to a discovery. They soon uncovered a chamber tomb where the priestess lay wearing hundreds of beads, with her hands resting over two pink spondylus shells placed on her pelvis. The tomb housed two other adults and five children, and her coffin was decorated with copper plates.

While Go notes that it involved a lot of shoveling that can be “painstakingly slow,” he was driven by excitement. This particular tomb had a plethora of marine-related artifacts, including ceramics in the shape of giant prawn, a headdress with a sea eagle and anthropomorphized crabs, octopus and catfish.

“Talk about an embarrassment of riches,” said Edward Swenson, an associate professor in the archaeology department at the University of Toronto, who works in Huaca Colorada, further south in the Jequetepeque Valley.

“People came from throughout the region to bury their dead,” said Swenson, who adds that finding a tomb is probably a life-changing experience for a budding archaeologist.

“In the Moche world you find them pretty regularly, but a tomb of this calibre — no — very rare.”

Go notes that digging in Peru is different than in Canada, and not because of the nationalism connected to indigenous cultures, but because of power relations related to who is doing a dig.

“It’s Peruvian archaeologists digging up Peruvian material, while in Canada it’s usually descendants from European settlers who are digging up First Nations remains, so it’s not necessarily the same paradigm that we’re dealing with.”

Go visited Macchu Picchu last year, and did a four-day trip to the Amazon in August, but says although he’s sampled many Peruvian delicacies, he does miss Canadian food.

“I really want some poutine. No one here knows what gravy is.”

Go came six weeks before the program to work on his thesis on burials from the late Moche period. Once the program started, the team would work in the sun from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., which isn’t for those with a “light interest” in archaeology, says Castillo.

“Matt is a very exceptional student,” said Castillo. “That type of commitment is very, very rare.”

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